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On March 19, the Dosti fellows will participate in a concert at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center. Hosted by Gig City Productions, the event will feature music and a meal provided by Sitar Indian Cuisine. Tickets are $25 for general admission and include the dinner and the performance. VIP tickets include dinner, the performance, preferred seating and two drink tickets. Sponsor/VIP table tickets are also available for $275 and include dinner for eight, performance, free drinks and preferred seating. To buy tickets, go to: http://www.gigcityproductions.com/dosti-music-project.
The Dosti Music Project 2016 Fellows and Collaborating Artists
* Performing as Abakis, Abigail Kiser is a singer/songwriter from Port Townsend, Wash., who creates a blend of classic soul with powerhouse vocals and Leo Kottke-style fingerpicking guitar.* Darbuka Siva is an actor, musician, music producer and radio disc jockey from Chennai, India. In 2002, he started a performing career with Oikyotaan, an outfit that experimented with Bengali Baul music. That led him to explore his own sound with his group Yodhakaa, a contemporary Indian classical music group that worked with ancient Sanskrit texts.* Fat Bird is the solo project of Danish Khawaja, a multi-instrumentalist from Lahore, Pakistan, who specializes in guitar.* Debasmita Bhattacharya is an accomplished player of the sarod, a lute with four strings. From Kolkata, West Bengal, India, she learned to play the traditionally male-dominated instrument from her father, Pandit Debashish Bhattacharya, a renowned sarod player.* Kaethe Hostetter is a violin player based in Jamaica Plain, Mass. She comes from a family of musicians and was exposed to violins of all kinds — in Mexican music, in Cajun music, Balkan, Klezmer, Albanian and Quebecois, to name a few. She helped form the successful groove outlet Debo Band, which she and an Ethiopian-American friend created in 2006.* Anil Sunny is a young tabla player from Sialkot, Pakistan.* Iftikhar Ali Khan is from Rawalpindi, Pakistan and plays the santoor, a trapezoid-shaped hammered dulcimer. He hopes to create an academy where he can train students on the instrument, whose players are becoming increasingly more rare.* Tanzeem Haider is a flute player from Lahore, Pakistan, who works as a barber by day.* Mohsin Abbas is a vocalist and harmonium player from Gujranwala, Pakistan, and comes from a long line of vocalists in his family.* Zeerak Ahmed, aka Slowspin, was born in Lahore, Pakistan, in 1990. She is a mixed media installation/sound/performance artist and, in 2009 she formed a four-person collective, the “TBP.”.* Shahzad Ismaily holds a master’s degree in biochemistry from Arizona State University and also is a largely self-taught composer and musician, having mastered the electric and double bass, guitar, banjo, accordion, flute, drums, drum machines various percussion instruments and analog synthesizers.* Sonny Singh is a musician, social-justice educator and writer based in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The two-year-old Dosti Music Project, which brings together musicians from Pakistan, India and the United States for a month-long residency and tour, will stop in Chattanooga March 18-19.
While the 10 visiting fellows and two collaborating artists will spend much of their time in workshops, including a session with local students, there will be three opportunities for the general public to interact with them.
Dosti, which means “friendship” in both Urdu and Hindi, is an initiative of the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. It is part of the larger OneBeat program, a creation of the U.S. State Department and was started five years ago with funding from the department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in collaboration with Bang on a Can’s Found Sound Nation, a New York-based music advocacy organization.
Both OneBeat and Dosti are designed to bring people together through music. OneBeat 2015 was held last October in California and brought together 25 musicians from all over the world.
Dosti 2016 started on Feb. 22 at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., and will end March 23 in Nashville. Along the way it will make stops in Savannah, Ga., Camden, S.C., Asheville and Black Mountain in North Carolina and in Chattanooga.
Artist Zeerak “Z” Ahmed from Karachi, Pakistan, is one of the fellows. She performs as SlowSpin and says she’s already gained a great deal from her two-week experience with the project.
“One of the things we did was have a silent day with no talking,” she says. “It allowed us to soak in the environment. It is a fresh way of looking at sound again and that’s the core of Dosti.”
So far, in addition to the silent day, where the individuals had to figure out ways to communicate without speaking, the group has had sessions where they put away their instruments and make music with found objects like pots and pans or sticks and rocks.
The exercises encourage the artists to become better listeners and collaborators, Ahmed says.
“As musicians, we are sometimes caught up learning the skills of the instrument,” she says. “This invites you to listen and wait as opposed to only accepting the way you heard it before.”
Christopher Marianetti, co-founder and artistic director of Found Sound Nation, has been working with the fellows and says this year’s group has been focused on learning news way to create sound and music through a variety of “challenges.”
“That sounds like they’re being voted off the island,” he says with a laugh. “It’s not that. We get them in the same space and mind to create ideas and songs, improvising together.”
On March 18, the Dosti fellows will present a Street Studio in front of the Chattanooga Library at 3 p.m. The event involves placing a microphone in a public place and inviting anyone and everyone to sing, talk, read, whatever, into it and recording it onto a laptop. Then everything is mixed together into a continuous loop of sound.
“The Street Studio is one of Found Sounds standard activities,” says Chattanooga Tour Coordinator Christie Burns, who attended OneBeat 2016. “You get an audio snapshot of what is happening in that spot that day. I’m interested because a lot of homeless make that their hangout so maybe we’ll get to hear their voices.”
After the Street Studio, the Dosti group will go inside for a free concert in the library auditorium at 4 p.m. That will be followed by a PechaKucha event at The Camp House on East M.L. King Boulevard. In PechaKucha, between eight and 10 participants can present 20 slides, which stay on the screen for 20 seconds each. Participants can say or do whatever they want during that allotted time. One of the Dosti fellows will be among the participants, Burns says.
“It’s rapid-fire and it’s random,” he says. “You never know what will be presented.”
Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6354.